Space Probes and Spacecrafts


Grade 9 Science ; period H ; Quan Lin, Sean Bow and Jacky Tieuexternal image Hubble1.jpg

This page will cover: A Time line of Space travel, What was discovered, The construction of a space probe/spacecraft, Instruments found on space probes/spacecrafts, Canada and other country's contributions and Canada's Space Program in General.


Time Line of Space Travel


By: Jacky Tieu

Space Exploration Timeline

Oct. 4, 1957 - Sputnik 1, first artificial Earth satellite.
laika640.jpg
Laika, The Space Dog

Nov. 3, 1957 - Sputnik 2 with dog Laika aboard, first animal launched into space.
Sept. 14, 1959 - Luna 2, first spacecraft to land on the Moon.
Oct. 7, 1959 - Luna 3, first pictures of the far side of the Moon.
April 1, 1960 - TIROS 1, first applications satellite launched (used for weather observation).
Aug. 11, 1960 - Discoverer 13, first recovery of a payloafalsed from Earth orbit.
April 12, 1961 - Vostok 1 with Yury Gagarin aboard, first human to orbit Earth.
Dec. 14, 1962 - Mariner 2, first data returned from another planet (Venus).
June 16, 1963 - Vostok 6 with Valentina Tereshkova aboard, first woman in space.
July 26, 1963 - Syncom 2 (telecommunications satellite), first satellite to operate in geostationary orbit.
March 18, 1965 - Voskhod 2 with Aleksey Leonov aboard, first space walk.
July 14, 1965 - Mariner 4, first spacecraft pictures of Mars.
Feb. 3, 1966 - Luna 9, first spacecraft to soft-land on the Moon.
April 24, 1967 - Soyuz 1 with Vladimir Komarov aboard, first death during a space mission.
Dec. 24, 1968 - Apollo 8 with Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders aboard, first humans to orbit the Moon.
July 20, 1969 - Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong aboard, first human to walk on the Moon.
Neil_Armstrong.jpg
Neil Armstrong

Sept. 24, 1970 - Luna 16, first return of lunar soil samples.
Dec. 15, 1970 - Venera 7, first soft landing on another planet (Venus).
April 19, 1971 - Salyut 1, first space station launched.
Nov. 13, 1971 - Mariner 9, first spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mars).
Dec. 2, 1971 - Mars 3, first spacecraft to soft-land on Mars.
Dec. 3, 1973 - Pioneer 10, first spacecraft to fly by Jupiter.
July 17, 1975 - Apollo 18 and Soyuz 19, the first international spacecraft rendezvous.
July 20, 1976 - Viking 1, first pictures transmitted from the surface of Mars.
Sept. 1, 1979 - Pioneer 11, first spacecraft to fly by Saturn.
April 12-14, 1981 - space shuttle Columbia, first reusable spacecraft launched and returned from space.
Jan. 24, 1986 - Voyager 2, first spacecraft to fly by Uranus.
March 13, 1986 - Giotto at Halley’s Comet, first spacecraft to make a close flyby of a comet nucleus.
Aug. 24, 1989 - Voyager 2, first spacecraft to fly by Neptune.
April 25, 1990 - Hubble Space Telescope, first large optical space telescope launched.
Dec. 7, 1995 - Galileo, first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter.
Nov. 2, 2000 - William Shepherd, Yury Gidzenko, and Sergey Krikalyov, first resident crew to occupy the International Space Station (ISS).
Feb. 14, 2000 - Feb. 12, 2001 - NEAR at the asteroid Eros, first spacecraft to orbit (2000) and land on (2001) an asteroid.
July 1, 2004 - Cassini-Huygens, first spacecraft to orbit Saturn.
Jan. 14, 2005 - Huygens probe, first spacecraft to land on the moon of a planet other than Earth (Saturn’s moon Titan).



What was Discovered?




Space-Art-Wallpapers-12.jpg Over the years, a lot of things have been discovered in space. From black holes to asteroids, stars to planets and even possible aliens, there are an incredible number of different things that have been discovered in space.






One of our most important discoveries would be the 9 or 8 planets. 8 planets because Pluto, the ninth planet is much smaller than any of the official planets and now classified as a "dwarf planet".


The Nine Planets

Mercury
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and the eighth largest. Mercury is slightly smaller in di
mercury.jpg
Mercury
ameter than the moons Ganymede and Titan but more than twice as massive.

orbit: 57,910,000 km (0.38 AU) from Sun
diameter: 4,880 km
mass: 3.30e23 kg


Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun and the sixth largest. Venus' orbit is the most nearly circular of tha
venus.jpg
Venus
t of any planet.

orbit: 108,200,000 km (0.72 AU) from Sun
diameter: 12,103.6 km
mass: 4.869e24 kg


Earth
full-20earth2.jpg
Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the fifth largest.

orbit: 149,600,000 km (1.00 AU) from Sun
diameter: 12,756.3 km
mass: 5.972e24 kg


Mars
mars.jpg
Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the seventh largest.

orbit: 227,940,000 km (1.52 AU) from Sun
diameter: 6,794 km
mass: 6.4219e23 kg

Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and by far the largest. Jupiter is m
Jupiter.jpg
Jupiter
ore than twice as massive as all the other planets combined (the mass of Jupiter is 318 times the mass of Earth).

orbit: 778,330,000 km (5.20 AU) from Sun
diameter: 142,984 km (equatorial)
mass: 1.900e27 kg


Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest.
saturn.jpg
Saturn

orbit: 1,429,400,000 km (9.54 AU) from Sun
diameter: 120,536 km (equatorial)
mass: 5.68e26 kg


Uranus
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and the third largest. Uranus is la
uranus-full-size.jpg
Uranus
rger in diameter but smaller in mass than Neptune.

orbit: 2,870,990,000 km (19.218 AU) from Sun
diameter: 51,118 km (equatorial)
mass: 8.683e25 kg


Neptune
Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the fourth largest. Neptune is smaller in diameter
neptune_voy2.jpg
Neptune
but larger in mass than Uranus.

orbit: 4,504,000,000 km (30.06 AU) from Sun
diameter: 49,532 km (equatorial)
mass: 1.0247e26 kg


Pluto
Pluto orbits beyond the orbit of Neptune (usually). It is much smaller than any of the official planets and now classified as a "dwarf planet". Pluto is smaller than seven of the solar sys
pluto.jpg
Pluto
tem's moons (the Moon, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan and Triton).

orbit: 5,913,520,000 km (39.5 AU) from the Sun (average)
diameter: 2274 km
mass: 1.27e22 kg



Another important discovery that we have made is the sun.


The Sun


Our Sun is a normal main-sequence G2 star, one of more than 100
sun5.jpg
The Sun
billion stars in our galaxy.

diameter: 1,390,000 km.
mass: 1.989e30 kg
temperature: 5800 K (surface)
15,600,000 K (core)

The Sun is by far the largest object in the solar system. It contains more than 99.8% of the total mass of the Solar System (Jupiter contains most of the rest). The Sun right now, is about 70% hydrogen and 28% helium by mass, everything else (metals) adds up to less than 2%. This changes slowly over time as the Sun converts hydrogen to helium in its core. It will continue to radiate for another 5 billion years or so (although its luminosity will approximately double in that time). But eventually it will run out of hydrogen fuel. It will then be forced into radical changes which will result in the total destruction of the Earth.


Comets


Comets are sometimes called dirty snowballs or "icy mud balls". They are a mixture of ices (both water and
swift-tuttle.jpg
Comet Swift-Tuttle
frozen gases) and dust that for some reason didn't get incorporated into planets when the solar system was formed. Comets are invisible except when they are near the Sun. Most comets have highly eccentric orbits which take them far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Only the short-period comets (like Comet Halley), stay within the orbit of Pluto for a significant fraction of their orbits. Meteor showers sometimes occur when the Earth passes thru the orbit of a comet. The Perseid meteor shower occurs every year between August 9 and 13 when the Earth passes through the orbit of Comet Swift-Tuttle.


Martian Life
165877-29144-marvin-the-martian_large.jpg
Marvin the Martian

With NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, the continuing presence of the Mars Exploration Rover twins (Spirit and Opportunity) and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (which has imaged nearly 40 percent of the planet) they have collected water ice near the north pole of Mars. Earlier, Spirit found silica in Gusev Crater. Scientists say, that hot water once flowed through the soil in hydrothermal vents. On Earth, these hydrothermal vents may have once harbored life. The discovered silica could have fossils of ancient life, if it did exist there.




The topics covered above are not the only things that were discovered, they are only a few interesting things you can find in space. There is an infinite number of things out there, like; black holes, stars , asteroids and even other galaxies. So there is alot that has been discovered and alot to be discovered.


Works Cited

World Space Flight: Timeline
http://www.worldspaceflight.com/timeline.htm
"space exploration." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 31 May. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/557348/space-exploration>.
"Space Probe." World of Earth Science. Ed. K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner. Gale Cengage, 2003. eNotes.com. 2006. 31 May, 2009
<http://www.enotes.com/earth-science/space-probe>
Jeanna Bryner. “Top 5 Amazing Astronomy Discoveries in 2008.” Senior Writer. 23 December 2008
Bill Arnett. “The Nine Planets.” William A. Arnett. 1994
<http://www.nineplanets.org/nineplanets.html#toc>





The Construction of Space Probe/Spacecrafts


By: Sean Bow

The forward fuselage consists of
- upper fuselage
- lower fuselage
- houses the
crew compartment
- supports the forward
reaction control system module,


The forward fuselage is constructed of conventional 2024 aluminum alloy skin-stringer panels, frames and bulkheads.
The panels are single curvature and stretch-formed skins with riveted stringers spaced 3 to 5 inches apart.
The frames are riveted to the skin-stringer panels. The major frames are spaced 30 to 36 inches apart.
The Y o 378 upper forward bulkhead is constructed of flat aluminum and formed sections riveted and bolted together;
the lower is a machined section.
The bulkhead provides the interface fitting for the nose section.
The nose section contains large machined beams and struts.
The
forward fuselage is covered with reusable insulation, except for the six windshields, two overhead windows and side hatch window areas around the forward RCS engines.


thermal protection system.
- various materials applied externally to the outer structural skin of the orbiter to maintain the skin within acceptable temperatures, primarily during the entry phase of the mission.
- The orbiter's outer structural skin is constructed primarily of aluminum and graphite epoxy. Black tiles called fibrous refractory composite insulation were developed later in the
thermal protection system program.
- Fibrous Refractory Composite Insulation tiles replace some of the High-Temperature Reusable Surface Insulation Tiles in selected areas of the
orbiter.
- nose cap, nose gear wheel well, nose gear and nose gear doors.
The nose cap is also a reusable thermal protection system. It is constructed of reinforced carbon-carbon and has thermal barriers at the nose cap-structure interface.
The doors are constructed of aluminum alloy honeycomb, and although the doors are the same length, the left door is wider than the right.
Each door has an up-latch fitting at the forward and
aft ends to lock the door closed when the gear is retracted, and each has a pressure seal in addition to a thermal barrier.
Lead ballast in the nose wheel well and on the X o 378 bulkhead provides weight and center-of-gravity control. The nose wheel well will accommodate 1,350 pounds of ballast, and the X o 378 bulkhead will accommodate a maximum of 2,660 pounds.

crew compartment
-The three-level crew compartment is constructed of 2219 aluminum alloy plate with integral stiffening stringers and internal framing welded together to create a pressure-tight vessel.
-The compartment has a side hatch for normal ingress and egress, a hatch into the airlock from the middeck, and a hatch from the airlock through the aft bulkhead into the payload bay for extravehicular activity and payload bay access.
-Redundant pressure window panes are provided in the six forward windshields, the two overhead viewing windows, the two aft viewing windows and the side hatch windows.
-Approximately 300 penetrations in the pressure shell are sealed with plates and fittings

midfuselage
The midfuselage structure interfaces with the forward fuselage, aft fuselage and wings.
It supports the payload bay doors, hinges, tie-down fittings, forward wing glove, and various orbiter system components and forms the payload bay area.
The forward and aft ends of the midfuselage are open, with reinforced skin and longerons interfacing with the bulkheads of the forward and aft fuselages. The midfuselage is primarily an aluminum structure

Heat Resistant Tiles
The HRSI tiles are made of a low-density, high-purity silica 99.8-percent amorphous fiber (fibers derived from common sand, 1 to 2 mils thick) insulation that is made rigid by ceramic bonding.
Because 90 percent of the tile is void and the remaining 10 percent is material, the tile weighs approximately 9 pounds per cubic foot.
A slurry containing fibers mixed with water is frame-cast to form soft, porous blocks to which a collodial silica binder solution is added.
When it is sintered, a rigid block is produced that is cut into quarters and then machined to the precise dimensions required for individual tiles.
HRSI tiles vary in thickness from 1 inch to 5 inches.
The variable thickness is determined by the heat load encountered during entry. Generally, the HRSI tiles are thicker at the forward areas of the orbiter and thinner toward the aft end.








Contributions made by Canada and Other Countries


By: Quan Lin

Instruments contributed by Canada
Canada is know for the exponential instruments on its science satellites. A Canadian instrument, called the Ultraviolet Imager (UVI), was comprised in the payload of a
OSIRIS
OSIRIS
Sweden Viking satellite. The UVI enabled the satellite to photograph the entire Aurora region. Another instrument called OSIRIS( Optic Opectrograph and Infrared Imager) is used to produce maps on concentrations of aerosols and nitrogen
Ultraviolet Image of the Aurora region
Ultraviolet Image of the Aurora region
dioxide. This dramaticly helps the study of the depleting ozone layer. Other instuments such as WINDII (used to research the winds of the upper atmosphere) and MOPITT (measurements of pollution in the troposphere, used to measure carbon monoxide) are all essential to NASA research.







Satillites launched by Canada

Name
Launched
Retired
Purpose
Alouette 1
September 29, 1962
1972
Explore the ionosphere
Alouette 2
November 29, 1965
August 1, 1975
Explore the ionosphere
ISIS-I
January 30, 1969
1990
Explore the ionosphere
ISIS-II
April 1, 1971
1990
Explore the ionosphere
Hermes
January 17, 1976
November, 1979
Experimental communications satellite
RADARSAT-1
November 4, 1995
Still in use
Commercial Earth observation satellite
MOST
June 30, 2003
Still in use
Space telescope
SCISAT-1
August 12, 2003
Still in use
Observe the Earth's atmosphere
RADARSAT-2
December 14, 2007
Still in use
Commercial Earth observation satellite
CASSIOPE
Scheduled for 2009



Contributions made by other Countries

The two most famous countries when it come to space would be the US and Russia. The US is well know for NASA, the largest space program in the world, who was the first to land a man on the moon. However, the Russians were the first to send a satillite into space with the launch of Sputnik 1, which was launched on October 4, 1957. Not only did these two milestones replace the entire cold war, They proved humans were capable of much more and that is the greatest contribution anyone could make.



Order
Country[0]
Satellite
Rocket
Location
Date (UTC)
1
external image 22px-Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg.png Soviet Union[1]
Sputnik 1
Sputnik-PS
Baikonur, Soviet Union (today Kazakhstan)
4 October 1957
2
external image 22px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png United States
Explorer 1
Juno I
Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States
1 February 1958
3
external image 22px-Flag_of_France.svg.png France[2]
Astérix
Diamant A
Hammaguir, Algeria
26 November 1965
4
external image 22px-Flag_of_Japan.svg.png Japan
Ōsumi
Lambda-4S
Uchinoura, Japan
11 February 1970
5
Flag of the People's Republic of China
Flag of the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China

Dong Fang Hong I
Long March 1
Jiuquan, China
24 April 1970
6
external image 22px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.svg.png United Kingdom[3]
Prospero X-3
Black Arrow
Woomera, Australia
28 October 1971
7
external image 22px-Flag_of_India.svg.png India
Rohini 1
SLV
Sriharikota, India
18 July 1980
8
external image 22px-Flag_of_Israel.svg.png Israel
Ofeq 1
Shavit
Palmachim, Israel
19 September 1988

external image 22px-Flag_of_Ukraine.svg.png Ukraine[4][5]
Strela-3 (x6, Russian)
Tsyklon-3
Plesetsk, Russia
28 September 1991

external image 22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png Russia[4]
Kosmos 2175
Soyuz-U
Plesetsk, Russia
21 January 1992
9
external image 22px-Flag_of_Iran.svg.png Iran
Omid
Safir-2
Semnan, Iran
2 February 2009
(first orbital launches by a country)

Canada's Space Program


By: Quan Lin

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) was established in 1989 by the Canadian Space Agency Act. The agency operates like a government department. The president
This chart shows whos in control of different sections of the CSA
This chart shows whos in control of different sections of the CSA
operates five core functions: Space Programs, Space Technologies, Space Science, Canadian Astronaut Office and Space Operations. The CSA has about 635 employees with about 90% of them employed at the John H. Chapman Space Centre, the Agency's headquarters located in Longueuil, Quebec. The 4 main activities of the CSA are:

  • Earth Observation
  • Space Science and Exploration
  • Satellite Communications
  • Space Awareness and Learning

Entry Into Space

Launched on September 29, 1962, the Alouette-I scientific satellite marked Canada's entry into space. The Alouette would be able to take pictures of the ionosphere from above. The previously planned one year mission was a great success due to the satellite expanding the mission to 10 years and taking over one million pictures in the prosess.

The Alouette I
The Alouette I


Bibliography


"CSA - Satellites." Agence spatiale canadienne | Canadian Space Agency. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 May 2009. <http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/tiger.asp>.
NASA - Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 May 2009. <http://www.nasa.gov/>.
"Timeline of first orbital launches by country -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 May 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_first_orbital_launches_by_country>.